


Sonder

by Davechicken



Series: Kylux - Fluff & Angst [7]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: M/M, Pre-Relationship, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-02
Updated: 2016-08-02
Packaged: 2018-07-28 23:53:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7662037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Davechicken/pseuds/Davechicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The realisation that each passerby has a life as vivid and complex as your own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sonder

He thought it would be easier, here. He thought it would be easier because the Leader would teach him how to - how to filter. He said he would show him how to master the Force, to bend it to his will. _In time_ , he says. _You’re not ready_ , he says. B– **Kylo** is ready. He is.

The young man finds the quieter places on the ship, sometimes, when it all gets too loud. In a way, it’s worse because - here - here the minds all think the same. He can hear the echoed images bouncing from bucket-head to bucket-head, altered in tone and timbre, but the words and the thoughts are all trammelled-down simulacra. Rank structures. Footsteps. Firing arcs. Turning circles. Area of fire. _Obedience._

It’s horrifying to him, because the faceless people behind white masks are all but cookie-cut-outs and Kylo has to wonder if that’s what’s planned for him. If that’s what the Leader wants for his black-clad soldiers, his Knights. Will their training be the same? Drilled in until obedience is breathing, and freedom is as distant a concept as family, as home?

He thought it would be easier, but the trickle of training and conditioning that bounces around the sterile passageways like the flow of blood through veins, of lymph through nodes… it’s terrifying in the uniformity, and he’d rather be alone entirely than listen to their souls dying, one at a time.

Then - one day - the man in front of him is different.

He has seen this kind before, the ones with faces instead of masks. With names, instead of numbers. They all think alike, in terms that contain more prophecy and anticipation ( _wonder what’s on in the commissary tonight, did I remember to order more socks, will the Leader pick me for the next mission_ ), but he has never looked twice at one, before.

This one is different. This one is as thin as a Twi’lek’s lekku, though he looks ready to cut you on his sharp edges, and his piercing blue eyes are angry at the galaxy and everyone in it. This one is _burning_ inside, a low mantra buried so deep down that Kylo wonders if he even still knows it’s on fire. Hate and a need to prove, a need to please, a need to impress. An aching _hole_ where something should be, and a sense of history that towers above him.

This one - this one - reminds him of himself.

Different, yes, and he finds himself drawing up in his presence. He can’t help it, the low, grating _need to impress_ and **need to be powerful** and _need to do it for himself_ are like a clarion call, like a reveille to his own half-formed hopes and fear. 

They fight. They fight, because they both want to be _right_ , to be the  **best** , to _win_.

Kylo doesn’t know how to talk to that deeper voice in Hux, and whenever he tries the words that come out sound like insults, sound like challenges. He doesn’t mean it, and he does. He wants - he wants - he wants the same thing, and he wants to be _good enough_. Not just for himself…

…but then, so does Hux. 

One day, he’ll even work out what that means. But now, now he’s a boy who can understand a language he can’t put his own tongue to, and although neither of them know it, they push one another harder and harder to try steal the affection from someone who will never truly give it.

One day. One day he’ll learn how to speak to that fire in the _other_. Learn to throw things in to fill the void. Learn that his own hole will only close up when he stops digging it deeper. Just not today.

Today, he’s still a boy. 

It takes a lot to grow up, but at least he won’t have to do it alone, not anymore.


End file.
